Biceps, right? Maybe Todd would be a bit quicker if he lost some of that muscle bulk. Edit: Not that I'd say so to his face.

I was thinking that a successful season or two from Hughes might mean he gets earmarked as Ferguson's successor-in-waiting -- a position that could otherwise go to another ex-United hero such as Bruce or McLaren. The more the latter two become bogged down and embittered by their years of full-time club management, the more chance United will be interested in a fresh face with international experience.

Careful what you wish for - I get the feeling that failure for Bruce will enhance the chances of Mark Hughes joining Man Utd in some capacity fairly soon.

Did anyone from the Press actually attend the game? There was no mention of it in the Observer yesterday or the Guardian today, and only two sentences describing the match in the Sun. Still, at least I got to see the goals on MOTD. Once.

In ukresistance.com's feature on the 50 Cent game, they printed the staff credits from the back of the manual and invited readers to scratch off the names as each offender was tracked down and killed.

Whoah, fellas! It's like I've stepped into a lost episode of the Twilight Zone - the Land that Taste Forgot. I'll put it down to seasonal madness or something. For future reference - FIFA. IS. CRAP. I thank you.

Is that a 'show us your credentials' challenge? Anyway, Souness never resorted to Queiroz/McLaren tactics (it's all the supporters' fault) or Big Fat Sam-style self-pity (nobody appreciates how great I am). If he'd have done that after spaffing £15m on three no-hopers then maybe we'd all be entitled to call him a waste of space, but since it wasn't your money or mine...

@USA's rant: What's the problem with Souness and why do you need to hate him so much? I thought he was pretty entertaining when he was here, he stuck up for the club, he certainly wasn't going to be pushed around by a bunch of footballers and he was a decent, quotable 'personality' manager. He was fun - Grabbi, Ferguson, Amoruso included - and that's what this is all about. Entertainment. Take it too seriously and the joy just evaporates. Blaming him for Newcastle's crapness, well... they've been nothing better than a house of cards since the Keegan days. The people in the board room are some of the most loathsome individuals in football and, HUGE club or not, nobody deserves success. There are plenty of more worthy clubs in the lower divisions - certainly ones without such persistent delusions of grandeur. Take 'em down, Souey!

That's right. I do the Nintendo mag here. Weren't you affiliated with Future at one point, on that fans network thing they did about six years ago?

Ahh, no - not games development. I'm on the periphery, ie criticising other people's hard work in games magazines Hence not enough money to build a PC...

Annual upgrades to keep your PC gamesworthy, plus a £1,500+ one-off every few years whenever there's a new tech that won't fit in your setup... I work in the games business but there's no way I'd spend that kind of money on such a short-lived piece of home entertainment. For the price of a high-end graphics card, you could probably get yourself an Xbox 360 plus a DS with Nintendogs for the missus.

Have you considered getting a console instead? Your £400 of new bits will only buy you another 12-18 months of high-end PC gaming.

You know, I don't buy that for a minute. The bloke isn't particularly clever, nor is he in any fit state to be dealing with tabloid journos of the type that have hounded him since he was a teenager. If he was rational - ie not sick and dying - then he would see that dealing with the NOTW is about as far from issuing a 'public service' sort of statement as it's possible to get. What next? Has he sold his autopsy video to ogrish.com? Besides, he must realise that nobody in this country, possibly not even among his own family, has the slightest bit of real sympathy for his self-inflicted demise.

Those NOTW pictures were disgraceful. I only hope that when the NOTW's editor is terminally ill in hospital, some cheap journo is waving a camera in his face and cajoling a dying man into 'approving' the publication of utterly humiliating photos. There's a much nicer tribute on the back page of the Observer's sport section, recounting the time Best nutmegged Cruyff after earlier telling the Press box exactly what he was planning to do. Not that he's dead yet. Is he?

As far as I'm aware, it's very much an EA Canada thing these days. It could be that portions are outsourced to other offices, but they tend to keep most of their development for each franchise within a single location. I haven't seen the FIFA offices but I did visit the place where they make the NBA games - it has its own basketball court! Money, money, money...

That's the magic of FIFA. It's made in Canada - I didn't know they played football there.

Maybe it's about time for an alternative to the World Cup. League football seems to be the most important thing for most players and fans, so how about a tourney with a Premiership Select XI versus their equivalents from Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Brazil etc? They could specify a maximum of two or three players from each club, to distinguish it from the Champs League. I could definitely live without hearing a bunch of thugs chanting In-ger-lund ever again.

One of the key points with that thing is that the majority of people never play videogames at all, and the most significant barrier to entry is the current controller setup. They're fine for you and me and other people who've either grown up with joypads or are prepared to spend time learning to use them, but for your mum, your girlfriend, the blokes down the pub who only ever play Golden Tee... When you're used to gaming, it's easy to forget how intimidating it must be to be handed a controller that, to the uninitiated, looks like something out of an aircraft flight deck. Shaping the controller like a TV remote should help get the console out of teenagers' bedrooms and into the living room. And imagine playing a tennis game where you actually 'bat' the ball, or a strategy game where you select units by pointing at them, or a first-person game where you look around by waving your hand.

Seen this? It's Nintendo's entry into the next-gen console market and it works like a mouse in 3D space. You can point, swing, tilt, wave, twist or use it like an ordinary controller. Looks stylish as hell too - miles nicer than the PS3 or 360 controllers. You've got to check it out, it's the most amazing thing ever. Loads of pics and videos on this site: http://cube.ign.com/articles/651/651275p1.html

Have a look at this: http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=60737 I think the technical term is "Xbox 360 teh r0xxor!!!1!"

This guy out-geeks the lot of you. http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2453

PS3 has dual-head output at 1080p, plus every other hd/dvi output you could want. It's something else.

Regarding Xbox 360 and PS3, since the majority of users aren't going to have access to HDTV, at least not for the first couple of years (by which time Microsoft may be ready to upgrade again!) early games on the 360 are likely to look better than the equivalent on PS3. The PS3 will support a higher HDTV resolution, but the 360 will do 4x anti-aliasing as standard. Smoother-looking graphics. Plus the 360's GPU is better suited to texture-rich, high-geometry environments, compared to the PS3's which will be better for pixel shaders (eg the Doom 3 engine). Me, a console geek?

Possibly. But then I reckon they'd trade places with us in an instant, which vindicates everything the Premiership stands for.

That was a superb article - although I think he bottled it a bit at the end by suggesting fans will ever be motivated enough to change anything. Me, I'm having a hard time motivating myself to watch Rovers at all this season. Not because I've gone off football as a sport or I'm some kind of glory supporter, but because there doesn't seem to be any point to the Premiership. All Blackburn and most other clubs are playing for is the right to continue gorging themselves from the honey pot. We might get lucky and give one of the top teams a game once in a while, or score the occasional big win against another ordinary club, but those are our 'cup finals'. By next May, most of it will have been forgotten and we'll be preparing for another season of exactly the same. It's no different in the lower divisions. All any Championship club wants is to be in Blackburn's position, thereby enabling them to pay millions to a mercenary like Bellamy. All Blackburn exists for is to avoid being the club to swap places with them. Where's the fun in that?